One common mistake businesses make is putting content on a website in PDF format. This seems to be more prevalent among older or more traditional businesses, but you’ll also see it commonly among restaurant websites as well.
I’ve even seen websites (usually B2B) where every piece of content is a PDF download. For others it may just be large reports, or things like menus.
There are many reasons why putting your content on a website in PDF format is a terrible choice. Put another way, this is the case against putting paper on the internet. Let’s dive in.
First, a caveat. There is nothing wrong with having content in a PDF as an alternate format. It’s when a PDF is the only format, or the primary format where this becomes an issue.
Below I outline 8 reasons why PDFs are a terrible choice for online content.
PDFs are unreadable on phones and tablets
If you’ve ever tried to view a PDF menu on you phone you’re well aware of this. If you pinch and zoom, sure, you can read it after some work but it’s a terrible reader experience. Take that to the next level of annoyance if you’re trying to read a blog post or report in PDF format. I find for tablets this is also the case although, granted, a little more workable.
What percentage of visitors to your website are on phones and tablets? That’s how many people you can chalk up to not being able to read your PDF content. For most websites this figure is well over 50% of visitors. Why would you put an instant barrier for people to consume your content?
PDFs mean less content for search engines
Companies who post content on their websites in PDF format typically have a blog post with a short summary and then a link or button to access the PDF.
If the goal is to get the webpage to rank in search engines (it should be), the chances of getting that to happen are much lower when posting a summary on the webpage instead of the entire piece of content.
Search engines such as Google are looking to rank the best piece of content to satisfy the user query. A fulsome report or post much better matches that criteria than a short summary.
It’s not that more content is always better, but there’s a strong argument to make that your webpage will rank higher if it includes the entire piece of content as opposed to a short summary.
Yes, the PDF can rank on its own but, as this blog post outlines, you’re better off getting the webpage to rank instead of the PDF.
PDFs are more difficult to rank in search engines
As mentioned above, a PDF can rank in search engines but a webpage allows for more optimization opportunities than that of a PDF. This is because you have full access to the HTML code. With a PDF you’re pretty much left with optimizing the meta data fields of the PDF.
In addition, a couple of other things to consider:
- Google crawls and indexes webpages from a mobile perspective (“mobile-first indexing”) so having your content perform well on mobile is advantageous
- Even if you succeed in ranking a PDF in search, the user doesn’t “visit the website” — the user goes straight from search engine to a file (not your website)
PDFs (visited directly) means less data and less upsell
Less data
Searchers going from search engine results direct to PDF do not show up in standard analytics tools such as Google Analytics because there isn’t a way to embed the analytics code in a PDF. Yes, you can get some of that data in places like Google Search Console (clicks from Google to the PDF), but that data is incomplete and disjointed.
Visits direct from search engines aren’t the only dark space in this. In many cases, referring websites will link directly to your PDF instead of your HTML landing page. Any referring website in this scenario does not appear in standard analytics tools and referral traffic is also not available in places like Google Search Console.
Less opportunity for upsell
When readers arrive directly at the PDF, they’ve essentially opened your PDF in their web browser or PDF reader.
The opportunity to “upsell” them to subscriptions, related content, etc. via any CTAs, or bottom of page links is not possible as the reader is not technically on your website.
That also means your standard navigation is also not available. The idea of the reader browsing your website does not exist, unless they click a link within your PDF to do so.
Essentially, they are “outside” of your website – making the opportunity for them to engage with your brand beyond the PDF much less likely.
PDFs provide less detailed readership data
Because there isn’t a way to place analytics code in a PDF, any user behaviour taking place on the PDF cannot be tracked. For example:
- What parts of the PDF did they read?
- How long did they engage with the content?
- What internal links did they click?
- Did they click an email link?
- (almost any other on-page activity you may want to track)
Yes, you can track clicks from your website to a PDF but that only provides minimal information and is non-applicable in scenarios when the user opens the PDF without clicking a link on your website.
And, yes, you can place UTMs (or similar tracking) on links to your website within the PDF but that again does not provide a full picture of user behaviour – and also removes the initial referrer to your content.
PDFs require more work to make them accessible
Making websites accessible is always the right thing to do, and for larger companies in many countries it’s the law. Having a webpage meet accessibility standards is far easier than doing the same with a PDF. In fact, making a PDF accessible is so difficult that even the most die-hard PDF supporter will likely say “just make it a webpage” once they find out the work involved.
PDFs reduce content promotion options
Piggybacking on the above reasons, if you plan to promote your PDF content through digital advertising you either waste your money buying mobile/tablet traffic (i.e. paying for visitors that cannot actually read your content properly) or are limited to buying computer-only visits (who can properly read a PDF).
Consider that most people consume social media on their phones, that almost entirely eliminates social media ads from your content promotion plan. Depending on your industry, your Google search traffic is similar in that a good percentage of related searches will be done on a mobile phone.
Once you’re limited to computer-only ad traffic buys, you’re not reaching everyone you could be reaching.
Finally, while not spending money on this traffic per se, any organic search and organic social visits from mobile, of course, are wasted as the visitors won’t be able to read your content properly.
PDFs are more difficult and time consuming to edit and maintain
After publishing content to your website, there are times when edits are required. If you’ve published that content as a PDF that usually means finding the original non-PDF file, making the edits, converting the file to a PDF, and uploading the new file to the web server. Depending the complexity of your PDF it may also require some design tweaks. If your content is in HTML these edits are usually simple and quick.
In addition, PDFs, because they’re file uploads, tend to sit around on a web server once they’re well past their relevancy. The website editor may remove a link to a PDF but rarely do they remove the actual PDF from the server. Meaning, any site linking to that PDF – and even search engines – still provide a window to that content.
Summary
Again, there isn’t an issue with having a PDF download available as an alternate way to consume the content, but if you care about readership it should never be the primary method of consumption.
I’ll even argue having a PDF as alternate/optional media isn’t worth doing. You’re essentially putting paper on the internet. Are people going to print that PDF? It’s unlikely. Then the webpage will suffice.
Do you have thoughts on this? Feel free to share in the comments below.